Strictly investigate the online trading of e-cigarettes, control the "first cigarette" sold to teenagers | the people's sharp opinion

Search for similar keywords on the e-commerce platform, there will be stores selling e-cigarettes popping up; the personal homepage of the social platform, leaving hints of words to indicate that there are e-cigarette sales... Recent media surveys have found that on some online platforms, some merchants sell e-cigarettes to minors in a more covert way. How to better protect the lawful rights and interests of minors has aroused social concern.

E-cigarette is a cigarette alternative product, although it does not contain tar, but the nicotine harmful to health, is an important component of most e-cigarettes, and the nicotine content of some e-cigarettes even exceeds that of traditional cigarettes. In the face of new situations and new problems in the field of market supervision of new tobacco products, when the State Council revised the Regulations on the Implementation of the Tobacco Monopoly Law of the People's Republic of China in November last year, it specifically clarified that "new tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes shall be implemented with reference to the relevant provisions of cigarettes in these Regulations". In reality, the "online ban" on e-cigarettes has been implemented more than two years ago. However, there are still some merchants who use social platforms, content communities, short videos and other channels to open the "gap" of the ban, which will obviously pose a huge threat to the physical and mental health of minors, and also put forward higher requirements for the legal governance of online transactions of e-cigarettes.

In essence, e-cigarettes are cigarettes, as long as they are inhaled, they will definitely cause harm to the human body. When some e-cigarette merchants promote products, they often avoid talking about their harm, mislead consumers with false propaganda such as helping to quit smoking, health and harmlessness, and even intentionally advertise e-cigarettes as representatives of youth, trends, and fashion, and package them as the "first cigarette" of teenagers. Especially marketing recommendations for teenagers, it is easy for them to relax their psychological vigilance. However, the respiratory system of minors is not yet mature, and inhaling e-cigarettes will produce a variety of health risks, and it is more difficult to quit once addicted. Therefore, for e-cigarettes, we should treat them as an important public health issue, and the core of governance lies in how to effectively control tobacco.

(Source Network)

Controlling the "first smoke" of minors is the key to reducing the smoking rate of the population. Revise the Law on the Protection of Minors, prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, urge e-commerce platforms to close e-cigarette stores, remove e-cigarette products, and carry out special actions to "protect growth"... In recent years, the mainland has always made the ban on the sale of e-cigarettes to minors an important part of tobacco control actions. With the continuous improvement of laws and regulations, crackdown and supervision efforts, the system guarantee for strict control of e-cigarettes will be more sound, and those online merchants who think that e-cigarettes are highly concealed and difficult to track will have difficulty in growing.

Tobacco control is not only related to the health of young people, but also to the future of the country and the nation. From this perspective, all parties in society need to work together to build a good environment for minors to stay away from tobacco. For network platforms, it is necessary to carry out rectification with greater intensity, higher standards and more effective measures, cooperate with functional departments to strengthen self-supervision, actively adopt advanced technologies such as image and video recognition, timely dispose of relevant commodity links, and quickly clean up illegal businesses. For schools and families, minors should take the initiative to help build psychological isolation belts that refuse to smoke. Facts have proved that the more specific and profound the understanding of the harms of smoking, the stronger the awareness of consciously resisting tobacco products. Only at the same time at both ends of the supply and demand of e-cigarettes, it is possible to reduce the various possibilities of "reserve smokers" from the source.

The idea that smoking is harmful to health has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. The 14th Five-Year Plan and the outline of long-term goals for 2035 clearly put forward that "tobacco control and alcohol restriction actions will be carried out". At present, a number of cities across the country have included e-cigarettes in the blacklist of tobacco control, and while increasing the penalties for illegal use of e-cigarettes, the scope of tobacco control has been expanded from indoor to outdoor areas of some public places. The trend is clear, the intensity is increasing, I believe that in the future we will be able to effectively reduce the public, especially minors, e-cigarette use rate, and promote the construction of a healthy China to continuously achieve new progress and new results.